The Runna half marathon training plan: weeks 1+2
All going to plan
Me, until a week or so ago:
I hate training plans.
I’ve been a runner, on and off, since late 2010. I’ve done 385 Parkruns, a handful of half marathons, and in the past 18 months have chalked up PBs at tons of distances: 2k, 3k, 5k (and a Parkrun PB), 8k, 10k and half marathon. Once I turned 49 I set myself a few “50 before 50” goals, and I achieved them all:
- 50 different Parkrun venues
- VO2 max of 50
- sub-50 minute 10k
- a 50km week
I even managed to log an entire calendar month of 100km at an overall average under 5:00/km. And I’ve done all of this without ever following an actual structured training plan, or even much advice. I’ve listened to a lot of advice, but pretty much never taken it.
A few days ago, that changed. Can’t really put my finger on why. I won’t go into epic detail about how I used to train without plans, or how plans made me feel, but some switch has flicked and today, 13th October 2024, I’m writing this having finished week two of a Runna training plan. Much to my surprise, I’m actually looking forward to week three. And I’ve decided, ‘cos I miss writing about myself, to write about my experiences following this plan as I aim to repeat my feat of a sub-2hr half marathon at Farnborough in February 2025.
Where I’ve been and where I’m at
In the past year I’ve done these PBs:
- 23:42 at Parkrun
- and I came first!
- .. of 6 😂: result
- 23:20 solo 5km
- 49:17 10km
- 1:55:17 half marathon
These were all set in the latter half of 2023 or early 2024. I’m not in that shape right now – I can just about manage a 25:xx 5km and a 53:xx 10km. Since turning 50 I’ve been enjoying food and drink a little too much, but also been injured and/or ill a lot, which in turn took a toll on my mood.
So. That’s my current state, or rather, that was my state as of 8 days ago. Here’s how the plan has gone so far.
Week 1
I absolutely nailed week one. Created a Runna account on Sunday, went through all the plan setup, told it not to suggest running on Sundays (unlike most people, I basically never run on a Sunday unless I’ve entered a race; I told it Wednesdays are my “long run” days).
Accordingly, Week one was one day long with no workouts. Runna says weeks start on a Monday, and who am I to argue.
Week 2
Monday: Progressive 4km … or not
Week 2 came around and I was totally up for doing a run on Monday morning. Runna said I had to do 4km, starting with 1km at a slow conversational pace then getting faster on each subsequent km.
As had happened literally every other time I’d ever considered a training plan, I disobeyed it immediately. With a mixture of petulance and self-flagellation, I’d just got back from an indulgent week’s holiday in Greece and was desperate to run The Ten Kilometres Of Repentance - so that’s what I did. Started at a reasonable pace, got slower in the second half, didn’t enjoy it. Finished in the 56-57 minute area, a year to the day (I think) since my 49:xx PB.
You can see it on Smashrun and Strava.
So, uh, not a great start to the plan. But! Runna did say I had to run a 10km “long run” workout this week, on the Wednesday. So I swapped the Mon and Weds workouts, and associated the 10km I’d just run with the workout, despite not following the progressive pacing. I hadn’t fully bailed on the plan just yet.
Wednesday: Progressive 4km, for real this time
Right, so on Wednesday I was told to do the original workout for Monday. Runna links to Garmin well, the workouts get synced to the watch and when I click start, then run, the Venu 2 says “OK, are you doing the 4km workout?”. And… I did!
It was a “progressive run” - each km faster than the last - and a tempo run, meaning it would involve working fairly hard rather than just a slow jog. Specifically, Runna wanted:
“Conversational pace”, as you can see, is supposed to be no faster than 6:05/km. Without instruction, I tend to just run as fast as feels comfortable for the distance I intend to cover and, over the past 18 months, that has been considerably faster than 6:05! And that’s a source of pride. But, hey, I am good at following instructions and when instructed to run slowly, I’ll run slowly.
During this run I had very little clue what was going on on my watch. The display was nothing like I’d ever seen - it was all custom to the specific workout it was putting me through. I didn’t want to keep staring at it, but needed to a few times before I finally figured out what was going on. There was a countdown until the end of the current interval, with periodic pace warnings when I was going too fast.
In the end, I reckon I did OK. I’m pretty good at doing negative splits by myself anyway. Here’s what happened:
| Instruction | Actual |
|---|---|
| 1km no faster than 6:05 | 6:12 |
| 1km @ 5:40 | 5:41 |
| 1km @ 5:15 | 5:09 |
| 1km @ 5:10 | 4:54 |
Excellent. Happy with that. I’m not surprised I had a sub-5:00/km in me, and I’m not unhappy I did it rather than slow down to follow the plan more strictly.
I kinda hate running less than 5km whenever I go out on a weekday, though, so after walking around messing with my phone to see what Runna made of my attempt, I then ran another 1km @ 5:11/km. Felt great, not just physically but mentally: I had successfully completed a workout of a structured training plan for the first time ever! Yay!
Here’s the 4km workout on Strava, and on Smashrun. Doesn’t the splits graph look pretty?
Friday: Hill repeats
Me, until a week or so ago:
I don’t run up hills
Runna, on Friday:
Yo. Darren. Run up some hills.
“Hill repeats”, it said. Now, I live in a hilly area. The clue’s in the name: they’re the Surrey hills. I even live half way up a big hill! But, see, what I do when left to my own devices is run down the hill to the flat stuff by the river or the old disused railway line, and then run along that until I don’t. Then I walk back up the hill to get home. I mean sure, there’s a few little inclines here and there but I don’t, as a rule, run up hills. And I guess that’s changed now.
Here’s what Runna had in store:
- 1.5km warm up at a conversational pace
- jog to the base of a hill
- repeat the following, 10 times:
- run “hard uphill” for 60 seconds
- 30 seconds “walking rest”
- “easy jog” back to the base of the hill
- 1.5km cool down at a conversational pace
Right. OK. I mean it’s only a minute each time, so, well, how far is that? If I can run 1km at 5:00 then it would be a fifth of that, 200m, if flat… hmm. I spent a while on Thursday poring over maps, and at lunchtime wandering the local streets, trying to identify a suitable place to do this daft exercise until my brother pointed out that there’s a mound called “The Mound” in the farmland just up the way, and that would probably do the trick. Of course! And way better than running in front of people’s houses repeatedly.
First 1.5km: 6:15/km. Absolutely nailing this conversational pace. And I’d planned it well enough that it literally left me at the base of The Mound. Figured out what my watch was doing - I had to explicitly press the lap button to say “I’ve finished the rest/easy jog bit, and am ready for the hard uphill”.
The Mound is too short. Bugger. I ran to the top, and down the other side, and a short way along another path in the 60 seconds. Then spent the first “walking rest”, um, jogging back over The Mound and continued jogging to identify an alternate start point for the remaining 9 uphill efforts. Mercifully this farmland is full of suitable paths of various inclines, between 12ft high corn. it took me a good 3 minutes to pick my spot, plus I took a few pics, and it was time for uphill #2.
Uphill #2 was hard. Oof. OK so this is what I’m told to do, and I’m doing it, but I don’t like it. Strava says I ran 180m @ 5:32/km, grade adjusted pace of 4:10/km!!! Of course I didn’t know the GAP until way later (I could have my watch tell me it, but I don’t) so it feels like maybe I went too hard, but I dunno? Anyway. I forgot the rest period was meant to be walking, followed by an easy jog back to the bottom, and in fact failed at that for all the repeats pretty much. I spent each rest+easy jog period jogging or stopping to take photos (Friday morning was very picturesque).
Hill #3, #4 and #5, more of the same. I’d picked well, and I was “enjoying” running through the corn.
Hill #6 and a dog walker appeared. The dog was SUPER interested in me, barked and ran and wanted to play in a way that I really didn’t. Not sure I quite finished the hill properly, and because man and hound were on my narrow path, I took a longer rest+jog period than before to find an alternative hill for #7. Hill #7 itself was fine, if annoyingly L-shaped, and on my way back to its start point there was more unwanted hound attention.
Returned back to the previous hill and ran repeats #8, #9 and #10. By now I was properly sergeant majoring myself, really looking forward to it all coming to an end. Didn’t in any way feel broken, but was fed up of the hills.
The cool down conversational pace 1.5km, well, that was apparently too fast @ 5:45/km. Overall, a 7.3km run with elevation gain of 121m - way, way more than I would ever do voluntarily. Having my watch not only reassure me that taking a break is OK but in fact mandatory was a pretty revelatory mental experience.
Here’s the whole thing on Strava.
I really expected to suffer later in the day, or on Saturday, with either exhaustion or DOMS or both.
Saturday: easy run
Final workout of the week was scheduled to be 6km “easy run”, conversational the whole way, no progression or prescribed paces whatsoever.
I was doing chores after a Friday night dinner party until a bit too late, so needed to run to get to Parkrun on time. Knocked out 1km @ 5:10, then walked the rest of the way. DOMS from Friday’s hills was curiously absent.
Recently made a new acquaintance at my local Parkrun, a man named Nick, and we do these days tend to run at literal conversational pace because we have a conversation all the way round. That’s handy! So we did that, and at the end I paused my watch while getting scanned, then tacked on the final km to make the 6km workout happen.
In reality, I did basically do a progressive workout. My splits were: 6:17, 6:00, 5:44, 5:53, 5:45, 5:29. But, I mean, that’s fine right? It was conversational pace, at least for 5km, and presumably Runna AI will soon figure out that my baseline fitness is perhaps a bit better than my recent 10km times originally led it to believe.
Here is is on Strava, and Smashrun.
Conclusion
Y’know what, after the failure that was Monday morning, that actually went very well. There was nothing too hard, I exceeded pace quite frequently, and it was all very manageable. I’ve looked through the following week’s workouts and it’s not true to say I’m excited or energised or motivated by them, but I don’t fear them - and that’s enough.
I wasn’t getting bored of running the same routes all the time, of not doing intervals etc, so this isn’t some way to keep me running - I don’t struggle for motivation. But I am motivated by the promise of what Runna thinks I am, or will be, capable of.